


Plot Armor

by zorilleerrant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Boy-Who-Lived Neville Longbottom, Gen, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Originally Posted on Pillowfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 11:43:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18072785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorilleerrant/pseuds/zorilleerrant
Summary: A what if about a universe where it went the other way around, but still mostly the same.





	Plot Armor

When Voldemort decides to go after the Longbottoms instead of the Potters, it’s not because of his affectations to pureblood arrogance, but theirs. The Longbottoms live in a world of class, fossilized just as long but never disrupted by the technology, by the revolutions that plague the muggle world. Here, the novel is a frivolity still, a guilty pleasure, a sweetmeat for women and children and not part of the learned man’s diet. There are genres to be found here, barely, though unexplored and ashamed of themselves, and Alice knows only those few.

Lily is a voracious reader.

Which is all to say, Alice never got Lily’s paranoia about obvious routes of attack. It’s easier to prepare when you’ve seen so many mistakes secondhand.

He sends his scouts, and they scour the ground, and they find baby Neville in an out of the way cottage, small, but listed in the public records as a Longbottom holding. Voldemort has a librarian on staff, a few notaries, a genealogist. Godric’s Hollow is hidden by shell corporations three deep, all of them muggle, none of them who mention any Potters as donors, which was the hardest part, all in all. There’s an Evans or two, unrelated, because Lily wants to throw in a few red herrings and it never occurred to James that Lily’s name mattered. The scouts come back with half a dozen rumors, but not one solid memory to show for it. Neville it is.

There’s a plea much like Severus’s, though from someone less thoroughly subdued, begged on both knees before the outset of the expedition, a stay of execution for Frank, a sometime close friend, partnered in so many upper level classes, almost godfather to the supplicant’s child not yet born, before the falling out over some small political differences. The Dark Lord, ever beneficent, agrees to spare that life barring undue effort. His underling, competent but not impressive, sighs in relief and kisses the hem of his robe.

The story goes much the same. A child cries, a parent dies, a monster makes an offer a hero can’t accept. Neville is left with two dead parents and a scar. He grows up the surer and more confident, with no hospital visits to make, because death is just an explanation, not a horror he has to witness over and over again. He grows up the lonelier and more hopeless, because parents he can never see belong to an age long past, an age of heroes, something wholly apart and unlike him.

James makes a mistake, an error in judgement, too careless one too many times. He hasn’t read the books. He’s seen, and caught, and Bellatrix has her revenge. He’s dead, or incapacitated, no matter; Harry isn’t in the magical world to see him either way. Lily has too noble a heart to cut her losses, and follows him when he doesn’t return, and is captured. She makes sure Harry is safe, but with no word sent, they quickly remove him to his Aunt’s house. Petunia is somewhat gentler at some years’ remove and with the possibility Harry might go away again, acting out her tragedy as she tells her friends she hopes her sister will return. Dudley gets a little more curious about his aunt. Vernon doesn’t care. There are a few more jabs at his mother than his father this time, with her the subject of attention. She never returns.

Draco still meets Harry in Madam Malkin’s, still meets Harry on the train. The conversation is still cut short the first time, longer the second, as he effusively praises the Potters, what a grand old line, even if they did marry kind of hmm-hmm. Draco alienates Harry almost immediately, though the latter sits patiently listening to the end of the line. Harry begs out of Slytherin, to a shocked betrayal filling tearful eyes. Neville won’t talk to him either, though he’s spent years trying to suck up. Draco isn’t good at making friends.

Ron follows the scraggly, unkempt boy onto the train, but leaves after a few moments, disinterest making him seek out new friends. He remarks on Neville’s scar, minding his manners about the tragedy just as mum warned him, and quickly changes the subject. Ron knows a bit about the circles Neville grew up in, but only a bit, and conversation fast peters out. Still, Neville likes quidditch well enough, and that occupies them for a time. It’s Ron to find Trevor, and Hermione nowhere. She’s caught up in someone else’s drama, a torn robe or misplaced book or anxiety about formal schooling. She ends up in Hufflepuff, knowing most of the class.

Rubeus still offers an album of pictures bound neatly with ribbon. Harry knows that face, if barely. He was older, now. Minerva still needs a seeker. Remus still needs a godson. Padma and Parvati still need dates, and Harry goes perhaps with one or the other, perhaps with both. Certainly, Ron doesn’t accompany them. Perhaps Harry bonds with Justin Finch-Fletchley, the other student no one particularly wants to talk to. He still never has a chance with Cho.

Albus needs a mentee, too, but that spot is filled by Neville. Neville the Chosen, Neville the Marked, Neville the Hero in school robes, who has a destiny greater than he could imagine. Neville who is loved by Ginny and may love her back, Neville who gathers a ragtag team of friends, Neville who’s too busy not to fail his classes but somehow scrapes through anyway. Neville whose boggart is still his fear of failure, though this time through too much belief in him rather than not enough, but it’s too hard to transform into an abstract noun, and so the creature picks a teacher well-known to hate. Neville who’s gifted in his first year with a cloak that no one knows is not his father’s, Neville who stands his ground to win over a wand he never holds, Neville who goes gladly to his death, surrounded by ghosts he doesn’t know how to greet, who never chooses to live again because in his storybooks the truly Good knights never returned. Because his parents never returned, and those were the only heroes anyone ever asked him to look up to.

And Severus changes sides, well before he learns of Lily’s strange disappearance. It’s not his lost love that he mourns, not til later, but the man who tutored him through his early trouble in potions, the woman who sometimes caused distractions while he cried. Alice was Alice to him, only because she was Alice to everybody, but Frank was never anything but Longbottom, and still, Severus’s heart stuttered to a stop when he heard the names. It was all well and good when everything was high symbolism and grand proclamations, when they cavorted through the streets with spells no worse than a third year could cast, when they spoke of great ambitions and sweeping changes and how to end corruption, how to offer protections for the downtrodden among their kind, how to rebuild the great civilizations whose relics sat rotting and eroding to dust. How to save _everything_.

And if some muggles died, well, it was so hard to tell one from the next, and anyway, Severus knew muggles. He knew how they taunted their own kind, and the worse they taunted anyone different. He knew they spat harsh words at their own children, that they cut ties with their siblings over petty jealousy. He knew they threw rocks at anyone and everyone, just to laugh. Perhaps the other muggles were glad there was one less among them.

And if some mudbloods died, well, they shouldn’t have attacked the Death Eaters, who had not yet done anything to them. They should have let political differences lie, should have met them in the court and in the legislature, should have kept to name calling and petty untruths and not started flinging about so dangerous hexes and curses so wildly out of proportion to their own. They shouldn’t have started clubs dedicated to unmaking society from the ground up or movements dedicated to forcing purebloods out of their own homes and businesses simply because they could no longer afford to stay. They made claims of self-defense so readily, but trusted no one else with one.

And if some halfbloods died, well, they were traitors and cowards, mostly, sneaking around and trading secrets for gold or silk or favors. They agreed at first but would turn at any new promise of fame or fortune. With no moral compass to guide them, they were a danger to all. It was unconscionable to let them roam free.

And if some purebloods died, well, those were the wages of war, and well everyone knew them.

And for years, Severus believed these things, believes them until one day two names fall from a herald’s lips, and it’s no longer  _a_  muggle or  _a_  mudblood or  _a_  halfblood or  _a_  pureblood. It’s Frank, who drank too much coffee in the morning and too much beer at night, who loved flying but preferred to watch others soar through the space his camera could catch, who wore robes three inches too short because he always forgot to have them tailored after he grew. It’s Alice, who loved mulberry ice cream, who read books almost faster than her colleagues could recommend them, who wore her hair pinned for business and in filigreed curls for balls and loosely bound for social engagements, who insisted she met a dragon once and bopped it on the nose to scare it away. It’s people, for the first time since he was recruited, real people, not an archetype of the destined rival, caricature of an enemy to the cause.

It’s two people whose faces he’ll never see again, two people whose photographs will always cause a wistful tug, two people whose portraits are either stuck in the follies of youth or too damaged to talk to long. Two people whose names will never be said again except in mourning, two people who loved life and loved each other and loved wizarding society for all they went about it differently. Two people who left behind an infant son.

And Severus swears at the close of a hasty funeral to keep that boy from harm because he isn’t just an instrument, a liability, a loophole to close; how could he have been naught but a prophecy mere weeks ago, when now he’s Frank and Alice’s  _child_? Their heir, their beloved son, their hopes and dreams for a better world in that fragile case they must have taken such delicate care with? He made no promises, he felt no debt, but still one calls him now, and he turns to the only Hero he knows he can trust, as far as such things go. And he begs and he pleads and he tries to explain to no end, but they need a spy, and no one else has come forth. Redemption is a tricky thing, but the only goal left to aim for, and him so many points down it feels like quidditch again.

So he watches Neville, too carefully, throwing insults around to draw attention from his attention, taking points from his ward and offering them to the heirs of his erstwhile allies, those who still stand him in good stead as he searches for more information, for the roots twined all through their kingdom and those to their sides. He watches with a sneer on his face should he ever be caught. Harry he glances at, once or twice, but with no more than a passing nostalgia and deep regret that he didn’t learn a few lessons a little sooner. Friendships, after all, can’t be as important to save as lives, or the careful ethical code he’s managed to build up would collapse under its own weight again, and then who would he turn to? Even the one answering his questions now is holding something back, is defending too adamantly that which must have nuance because it isn’t obvious at all.

There are so many fewer memories to send with the boy, but in the end, they’re enough to spur him on.


End file.
